John Raynor could be in his first full season of minor-league baseball with the Orioles.
The outfielder from UNC-Wilmington was taken in the 12th round by the Orioles in the 2005 amateur draft.
“I made up my mind I would sign if I was taken in the top 10 rounds,” Raynor said this past weekend.
Raynor kept his word. He went back to school for his senior year, and is hitting a team-high .378 with 11 homers and 64 RBIs.
UNC-Wilmington (41-20) captured the Colonial Athletic Association title with a 7-6 win at home Sunday over Virginia Commonwealth, as the Seahawks scored three times in the last of the ninth.
The win gave UNCW an automatic bid to the NCAA tourney, which begins this week. The Seahawks, the only CAA team to make the NCAA field, will face Winthrop at 2 p.m. Friday in the Chapel Hill Regional in North Carolina.
“I am extremely happy I came back. I feel I made a better situation for myself,” Raynor said.
Raynor said several teams have expressed interest in him this spring. He hopes to get picked earlier than the 12th round when the draft is held June 6-7.
UNC-Wilmington came back from a 9-2 deficit after three innings to beat James Madison, 10-9, in the CAA tourney on Friday. Joe Lake, from Long Reach High in Howard County, started at third base for JMU and had two hits. Lake (.327 this year) also had two hits Saturday in a 6-1 loss to VCU, as JMU was knocked out of the tourney.
One of the assistant coaches for VCU is Tim Haynes, a 1972 graduate of Towson University.
Schoendienst shines
Old Dominion University was 39-17 prior to the CAA tourney, but the Monarchs lost a pair of 10-inning games and were knocked out of the six-team event.
Senior infielder Jesse Schoendienst of ODU had two hits in a 6-5 loss to Georgia State. That raised his average to .303 this season. The C. Milton Wright graduate?s great uncle is Red Schoendienst, a Hall of Famer and former manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. Jesse was drafted in the 40th round by the Cardinals in 2005, but returned to ODU for his senior year.
In the majors
There are several CAA products in the majors, including Brandon Inge (VCU) and Justin Verlander (ODU) of the Tigers, and Oriole closer Chris Ray (William and Mary) … UNCW has signed high school senior Daniel Cropper, from Snow Hill on the Eastern Shore. Baseball America rated Cropper the top prep player in Maryland … Tim Hamulack (Edgewood High) pitched for the Dodgers on Friday and Sunday at Washington against the Nationals. The lefty reliever gave up a home run to Nick Johnson on Sunday, and his ERA stood at 6.30 prior to Monday?s game in Atlanta.
